Sewing Baskets Full Of Mice
by alikat522
Summary: When the crew takes on a job for Jayne's mother, River gets a peek at what their big brute is made of.


Author's Note: Written for apckrfan for the Help the South Charity Fan Auction.

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><p>"Now is this gonna be some sort of family reunion or an actual job? We don't got enough fuel to go dallying back to see everyone's old girlfriends."<p>

"There's a job, Mal. My mother needs some of the harvest moved off planet without the feds peekin' in, and we're close."

"Just your ma running the farm?"

"My brother's visiting; he finished up his last contracted hit, so he's taking some time off. And my mei mei's been staying there for a while. Took a bunch of shrapnel to half her face last year, got damp-lung from the infection and had to go crawling back home. I hear she's ugly as sin now. My cousin's still on the run, no one's heard from him for a while, so other than that, it should just be a couple farm hands."

"…You're not the black sheep of your family, are you? Okay, I'll think about the job. Got to talk to Wash about the next fuel stop, and the-"

"River? What are you doing back there?"

He found me. I wasn't sneaking. No church-mouseing here. I like to go back to the dock, listen to space through the doors; it's not my fault if people talk next to me. Or think next to me. The cats didn't see my mouse hole. But my sparrow brother did. The two others have moved on, so there are no hasty explanations.

"We're going to see his cloth."

"What cloth?"

"The cloth he was cut out of. Like you and me. We have the same patterns, the same threads. We're going to go see his patterns."

"Okay River, that sounds nice. Why don't you come out of there and we can wash up for dinner."

"Do you think I'm unraveled?"

"…Come on, Mei Mei."

Our threads are back on Osiris. But when they're stretched so far and mixed up so much, will the pattern still match at all?

-/-

-/-

We set down in the mid-day, spreading dusk across the fields and small home. A woman runs out and he picks her up and spins her, a bizarre mirror version of parent and child. The woman is small, with a name as bright and shiny as she is. The captain shakes her hand and others come out of the home to see the visiting outlaws in their personal den of thieves.

"Gabriel, Mattie, you two get over here, I want to see my children together for once!"

There is so much same-cloth that their minds feel the same, all happy in the exact same way. She hugs her killers tight and welcomes them home. Her oldest son, with ice-water veins, paid to transport bullets into skulls. Her middle-child, ours, the cocky criminal with a metal mistress that spits fire. Her trench-dog daughter, who lost her symmetry, a face half dancing scars and half devils grins. She pulls them all close and I'm surprised she doesn't drown in all the bloody hands. But she seems like a woman used to being wet.

There is talking and hugging and laughing for hours, drink and smoke hanging heavy in the air. His mother mentions something to him and he slips out the back, gun in hand, into the underbrush.

I go for a walk, and the bright lady sees me and makes me wear a worn orange vest. She pulls it over my shoulders with hands that remember this motion, painting her little hunters in fire colors. They only wore grey and brown when the law-men came and she told her children to melt into the fields and they all learned the most powerful places were the ones where you couldn't be seen. Orange is for when people don't want to shoot you.

An orange vest won't keep me safe.

The captain is talking guns with the brother, and Simon is talking infections with the sister, and no one here knows better than to let me go walking alone. I wander through the plants, the ones with minds of their own. Papaver somniferum. Poppies. A sweet name for a plant that bleeds. The captain will load it on board tomorrow, send the plant-blood across the stars. Simon doesn't like it, nor Zoe, nor the Sheppard, but I want to tell them it is okay. The plants don't mind, and I like how it makes people's brains sing.

I find him on the top of a ridge, eyeing wild dogs through his lady's scope. He doesn't look up when he talks.

"You shouldn't be out here. 'Specially without a vest."

I start to tell him I have one, but it seems to be gone, and I think the plants took it, those sneaky crooks.

"Get back to the house. With the whole gorram crew at her table, my mother needs something to cook."

His eyes paint cross-hairs on the animals below.

"Git. Unless you're gonna explain to Mal why there's nothing on his plate but bones. Not that anything's _ever_ your fault."

He doesn't bother to mumble the insult. He yells at me, calls me names, betrays me, and if I were to put a knife through his hand just to see how the bones would realign (and it would be a sight to behold), he'd smack me. He doesn't treat me like I'm made of glass.

I'm not sure if I am or not.

He squeezes the trigger, a canine yelps, and he stands up and brushes himself off.

"If you're here anyway, you help carry. Who knows, maybe bit a manual labor'll work the crazy out a ya. 'Stead of just wandering around the ship all day."

I like not being glass.

-/-

-/-

"-an first time I saw a mirror in the hospital, I swore I was gonna track down whoever designed those goggles and give 'em the tumble of their life for saving both my eyes. Right after I found whoever made that face mask and rocketed 'em into a star."

All the gunslingers at the table laugh at the woman's joke. Kaylee and the dinosaur man smile; the Sheppard raises an eyebrow. My brother tries not to be sick. The ill-healed wounds on her face, touched by half-trained medics, the hand-made furniture that the food rests on, the bloody meat on his plate; my brother is very far from Osiris.

The captain wishes there were horses outside so it could feel even more familiar.

And he is in his element entirely, around the family table. Except for one thing.

He doesn't look at his sister's face too long, or the old farm hand's leg space (where a leg used to be until Reavers stole it and why do they need legs anyway it won't quiet down their heads at all). No, if he looks at them too long he sees his own hands in shreds, the good bad doctors telling him he can't hold his metal lady anymore. Or an eye that no longer gives depth. Or a tremor that steals all his aim. He'll be useless and weak and it will hurt so much and pain really is scary.

The lion man taught my brother. The schools taught me. Everyone here has known it forever. It's one of their same-threads.

Speaking of looking, there is a lot of it going around. The brother with the angel name watches me out of the corner of his eye. Sometimes the sister stares. Even the mother pauses as she hands me more radishes. "Our doctor's little sister" wasn't enough of an explanation. My face is already filed in their minds along with wanted posters, news alerts. Bounties.

So that's where he gets it from.

-/-

-/-

The sun sets early here, blanketing the prairie in lavender. Bedrooms are distributed, final drinks are shared, and Simon wants to go back to the ship so badly, but can't bring himself to be rude, so Kaylee Zoe and I share a guest room, while he, Wash, the Sheppard and the captain get assortments of blankets and floor. As much as Kaylee misses her, it is good the silk-clad lady isn't here. Perfume and dust don't mix well.

I lie on the cushions and listen as minds turn off one by one, the soothing final moments before sleep. Blink, blink, blink, darkness. In another room, blink, blink, blink, darkness. Blink blink blink blink blink blink blink. Of course, not everyone sleeps.

Mattie perches on the roof, keeping her protective vigil. Everyone has their shift here, watching the fields and the skies. She clutches her gun to her, rubs the good skin of her face against the metal. No one messes with her mother's den.

And below her, below me, the two brothers sit, boots perched on the table in childish defiance; there's no wooden spoon to smack them this late at night. But they don't break all the household rules. They avoid the plants outside, to keep trigger fingers steady and targeting eyes clear. Just cigars and sake and clean-but-still-bloody hands.

One of them wants to make his hands bloodier.

"Anyone with half an eye to the notices could see it. You never put it together?"

"Drop it, Gabe."

"There's good money to be made there. Shame to see the pretty little thing turned over to the feds, but a job's a job."

"It's not worth the trouble."

"You could find a new crew."

"That's not what I meant."

The chair creaks as it leans back. I hear it through their ears, too far to pick up with my own.

"Ahh. Tried it before, did you?"

"Turned to gos se at the end. Bunch of back stabbing bastards."

"That's why you use a middle man. Sell her to someone else, let them deal with the feds."

"…No, I'm not gonna get into that mess again."

"Mind if I try? Mattie's got a fence with good Alli connections; I know she'd like to take a crack at it too."

He takes a drag of the cigar before he answers. He tilts his head up, blows it out, watches the beautiful swirling death hit the ceiling. If I got down on the floor of my room, I could smell it with my own senses, not just theirs.

"I'm only saying it one more time Gabe. Don't mess with the girl. Or the doctor. It's not worth your time or trouble. Let it go."

I can feel the older man's jaw clench. Anyone else, and he would have pushed and convinced, or just dodged the whole mess and taken me in the night. He doesn't like it, this weaker man sitting where his brother was moments before. But sitting in his mother's kitchen, sharing cigars with his little brother, watched over by his sister on the roof, he can't help but know the importance of common cloth.

"Fine. You're making a big mistake, letting that go by. You can stay with your little courier service if you want, I won't stop you."

He downs the last of his sake.

"Mattie's looking to re-enter the job market, get back in with her old ways. She doesn't want to lose her edge. I recommend you take her lesson."

A snubbed out cigar, an abandoned glass, and our own personal criminal is the last one in the kitchen, wondering what happened to all his threads.

-/-

-/-

The crops are loaded, the farewells are said, and the engines send us back into the darkness, fleeing the early morning light like bats. Simon cannot get to the small showers fast enough. The rest go back to their places, the spinning machinery or blinking control panels that they call home. He sits in the loading dock, staring at the doors.

That used to be my job.

"Same-cloth isn't always the best, you know."

He barely acknowledges me. I resist the urge to rip off his ear to make him sure that he listens.

"At the Academy, the others were all like me. So many minds together, all going down at the same time. No matter how many walls they put between us, we could listen to each other at night. Compare the tones and timbres of our screaming."

He's actually listening now. Not that he'd ever admit it.

"You could form a loop, if you wanted. Or sometimes it happened on accident. You listen to them listen to you listen to them listen to you, on and on forever, until a nurse with a needle makes it quiet. The same minds, making the same noise."

I sit down next to him, touch his arm. The muscle tenses and coils.

"I like it here. No one's threads match. We're all patchwork. We make a nice quilt."

He wants to push me away. It would be fun to see me hit the floor. He could get up and walk away.

But the large hand moves and sits on my shoulder. Still. Not a hug, not a punch, just a presence.

We sit together, two patches in this serene little sewing basket, and listen to space.


End file.
